Funisciurus
African striped squirrels, or rope squirrels, form a taxon of squirrels under the subfamily Xerinae and the tribe Protoxerini. They are only found in western and central Africa.

Joseph Smit · Public Domain · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- Rope SquirrelPBDB
- Sits inside
- ProtoxeriniPBDB
- Diet
- granivore, frugivorePBDB, for Sciuridae
- Life habit
- scansorialPBDB, for Sciuridae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Eutheria
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Funisciurus on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
2 occurrences- Pleistocene50%
- Holocene50%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Funisciurus and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Funisciurus and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
96 taxa- Amphibia2 sites
- Atherus africanus2 sites
- Bovidae2 sites
- Canis2 sites
- Cephalophus2 sites
- Cephalophus monticola2 sites
- Cercopithecidae2 sites
- Cercopithecus2 sites
- Cricetomys2 sites
- Galagoides2 sites
- Gonaxis pusillus2 sites
- Hylochoerus meinertzhageni2 sites
- Hystrix2 sites
- Kobus kob2 sites
- Leporidae2 sites
- Limicolaria2 sites
- Maizania2 sites
- Mammalia2 sites
- Neotragus2 sites
- Ophidia2 sites
- Orycteropus afer2 sites
- Ourebia ourebi2 sites
- Papio anubis2 sites
- Potamochoerus porcus2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Funisciurus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
2 references- Les faunes de vertebres quaternaires en Afrique centrale1
- The use of fish remains in African archaeozoology1
Each of the 2 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Funisciurus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Joseph Smit
- Licence
- Public Domain
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
CT scan
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Funisciurus pyrropus · usnm:mammals:435043
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itProtoxerini through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Trouessart 1880